The Phenomenology of Moral Experience

Maurice Mandelbaum

• Editorial: Barakaldo Books
• Año: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781839745737
• Categoría: Psychologie
• Categoría: Geschichte & Theorie in der Psychologie

During the past few decades most philosophers have approached ethical theory through logical and epistemological analyses. Others have attempted to derive ethical theory from interpretations of psychological or sociological facts. Professor Mandelbaum shows the necessity for grounding any ethical theory upon the phenomenological analysis of moral experience. In analyzing the structure of that experience and the types of judgment to which it gives rise, Professor Mandelbaum takes as his point of departure the claims of three different traditions: British moral philosophy from the eighteenth century through the first third of the present century; the phenomenological movement in Germany; and the naturalistic, psychologically oriented theories of value which on the whole were characteristic of American philosophy in the first half of this century.In six essays the author probes the most significant features of various types of moral experience and describes those features that all possess in common. His conclusions tend to support those who have attacked the utilitarian tradition."This is an important and valuable book; neither startlingly revolutionary nor disturbingly profound, its merits are of a more modest kind. Professor Mandelbaum discusses some well-worn themes, but he has an eye for the essential and he illuminates some important areas in moral philosophy that have recently been left obscure."—Philosophy

CHAPTER 1—THE PROBLEM OF METHOD

In spite of the admirable clarity and rigor of many contemporary British and American studies in ethical theory one cannot easily escape the conviction that they have been confined to a narrow enclave within what was once thought to be the province of ethics. In my opinion, such a narrowing dates from the turn of the present century.

Perhaps the most significant factor which has led to this limitation of the scope of ethics has been the attempt to draw a sharp distinction between normative and descriptive disciplines. Among most contemporary philosophers it now passes for an obvious truth that ethics is not to be regarded as having a descriptive or explanatory function; it is held that its task, being normative, is to deal not with “what is” but with “what ought to be.” However, it has been insufficiently noted that this distinction between normative and descriptive disciplines has been espoused only in the last decades; in its present form it can scarcely be said to have been current before Sidgwick.{1}

To be sure, the distinction between descriptive and normative statements is by no means new. For example, in the eighteenth century, Hume was not alone in noting it. However, neither Hume nor his contemporaries held that a distinction between these two types of statements in any way precluded ethical inquiry from investigating problems which concerned matters of fact. For them such matters of fact were not merely of peripheral interest: Butler and Price, no less than Hume and Smith, apparently believed that some of the central problems of ethics could only be solved on the basis of adequate descriptive and explanatory inquiries. If these moralists (and many others) are not to be considered as hopelessly confused, the distinction between normative and descriptive statements, and the existence of “normative problems,” does not entail that one should attempt to define the province of ethics by means of a distinction between normative and descriptive disciplines.

What, then, has led to the current assumption that ethics must be defined in such a way as to exclude descriptive and explanatory inquiries from the field of its competence? Doubtless, the cruder mistakes of certain “scientific” theories of morals have played their part. In addition, however, there have been two powerful tendencies in recent philosophic thought which have supported the belief that ethical inquiry can be freed of the obligation to investigate matters of fact. The first (which is the one of lesser importance so far as British and American philosophy are concerned) was the general revolt against “scientism” in the closing years of the last century. The attempt to draw a distinction between scientific explanation and other modes of knowing made it plausible to hold that the proper method for ethical inquiry was a method different from that which the sciences followed. From this conviction it was but a short step to the further and more radical assumption that it was possible to divorce normative questions from whatever answers to factual problems were proposed by the sciences.

The second tendency was the growth of “analytic philosophy.” There were two points at which this movement lent plausibility to the dichotomy between descriptive and normative disciplines. In the first place, once the dominant problem for philosophy became the clarifying analysis of meanings and of controversies concerning meanings, the distinction between normative and descriptive statements led to the view that the discipline of ethics had for its primary task the analysis of the meanings and implications of normative statements. In the second place, since a philosophic analysis of meanings was believed to be independent of any causal, explanatory inquiries, the analysis of normative statements was believed to constitute a self-contained and self-sufficient discipline. The upshot of the analytic method was, then, to confine attention to what moral judgments assert, and interest was focussed upon the basic normative terms contained in these assertions. Thus, for a time, ethical theories tended to concentrate upon the tasks of discussing the meanings of various normative terms, of analyzing the connections between these terms, and of applying the implications of these findings to the question of whether there is a universally valid standard for conduct. This program (even when it dealt with the more specific content of moral assertions, and did not confine itself to discussions of the most general normative terms) limited ethical inquiry. Excluded from ethics “proper” was any consideration of the conditions under which moral judgments were made, or of the characteristics of man which were responsible for such judgments.{2} In brief, the primary problems of ethics came to be regarded as problems which concerned the language used in describing moral experiences, rather than problems arising out of the need to analyze that experience itself. It was this willingness to deal with moral experience through its reflection in language which made it possible to utilize the distinction between normative and non-normative statements for the purpose of segregating those problems which are normative from those which are “merely” descriptive.{3}

Strangely enough, despite the widespread acceptance of the thesis that ethics is a normative discipline, and that the solution of its problems can proceed independently of investigations of matters of fact, little has been said concerning the question of what constitutes an adequate method for such a discipline. Objection has been raised to past attempts to make ethics dependent upon metaphysics, upon sociology, or upon psychology, for such attempts would of course break down the distinction between normative and descriptive disciplines. However, those who have been most insistent and most thorough in their objections have often failed to provide any positive statement concerning the method which a self-contained normative ethics can follow. Where we find such statements, they are not as carefully formulated nor as systematically defended as one would presumably have a right to expect them to be.

I shall not attempt to make up for this deficiency. Instead, I wish to examine the problem of method in a form which is applicable to all ethical theories, and not merely to those theories which have antecedently restricted the scope of ethics by accepting the current dichotomy of normative and descriptive disciplines. In the wider context of the history of ethical thought it is possible to distinguish at least five general types of approach. These I shall characterize as the metaphysical, the psychological, the sociological, and two forms of a phenomenological approach. It is with the first three, and with one form of the phenomenological, that Section i of this chapter will be concerned.

i.

OF THE FIVE APPROACHES to ethical theory which I find it useful to distinguish, no two need be mutually exclusive. In fact, every ethical theory naturally tends to use first one and then another in obtaining a solution to its problems. Yet, what constitute its problems will in some measure depend upon which of these approaches, or orientations, it originally adopts. It is therefore of importance to consider the advantages and disadvantages which each holds when taken as a basic method for ethics.

1. The metaphysical approach to ethics seeks to discover the nature of a summum bonum or of a standard for moral obligation through recourse to a consideration of the ultimate nature of reality. In this it has often been allied with a system of moral beliefs which claim divine sanction. However, a system of moral beliefs is not an ethical theory: what is called “theological ethics” is, in the terminology here used, merely one relatively pure type of metaphysical theory of ethics. Like other instances of the metaphysical approach, a system of morals founded on divine sanction, and guaranteed validity by it, seeks to derive the standard of value and of human obligation from the ultimate nature of reality.

The temper of contemporary thought in the western world has tended to obliterate most traces of the metaphysical approach, but the examples of Plato and later Christian thought, and the names of Spinoza, Clarke, Hegel, Bradley, and Green testify to the influence which it has had. And if we examine the thought of others, for example, of Aristotle, or the Epicureans, or Kant, we find that at critical points in their systems they too have been influenced in their manner of posing ethical problems by the use of a metaphysical approach.

What underlies this approach is the belief that if we are fully to understand the nature and significance of any of man’s characteristics we must first understand the nature of man, and that such an understanding necessarily involves a consideration of the ultimate order of which man is a part. Not being content to assert that moral phenomena have their metaphysical implications, those who follow the metaphysical approach believe that the sole means by which an ethical theory may be validated is to start from the whole and deduce from its nature what the standard of moral action must be.{4}

All such attempts have of late been attacked on strictly theoretical grounds. It has been argued that to derive a standard of value or obligation from any facts of existence, however unique, is to confuse “what is” with “what ought to be.” Let ultimate reality be what it will (so the argument runs), we may still meaningfully ask “Is it really good?” To this attack there is, I believe, an adequate answer. No matter where we start, we must in the end reconcile our conceptions of value and of obligation with what we conceive to be true of the world. In specific instances our normative judgments may unhappily come into conflict with actuality, but we inveterately believe (as the normative senses of the term “nature” constantly recall) that what is good and what is morally obligatory have their foundations in the underlying properties of being. Only the most violent diremption enables us even to suppose that reality and value are antagonistically related. This common belief may spring from the fact that our conception of “reality” is itself normatively determined, or (as I think) from the fact that we prize that which strikes us as being real—not sham, illusion, mere artifice, or appearance—because it is real. In either case it is fallacious to argue that the metaphysical approach to ethics is guilty of error in coupling what is ultimately real with what is ultimately valuable.

The error in the metaphysical approach is, in my opinion, a quite different one.

No system of ethics can be validated merely by showing that it is entailed by the nature of ultimate reality. If the system which the metaphysician deduces is not consonant with the judgments of value and obligation which men actually make, no amount of argument will convince us that the system is valid and its metaphysical basis true. Of course, some judgments of value and obligation may be claimed to be false, but the falsity of these will be connected with the truth of others which, independently of the system, we are willing to accept. Thus, it is possible to claim that the metaphysical approach to ethical theory is not self-sufficient: the validity of a metaphysical ethics must be tested through an appeal to what one is willing to acknowledge to be an enlightened moral consciousness. Every such system therefore also involves one form of what I shall term the phenomenological approach.

If it is possible to unite a careful, unbiased investigation of the data of man’s moral consciousness with a metaphysical approach, some advantages may accrue to those who follow the metaphysical method. I do not seek to deny that such a possibility exists; however, it has rarely, if ever, been actualized. Those who adopt the metaphysical approach are concerned to deduce, and thus validate, only those judgments of value and obligation which they find to be ultimately justifiable. Consequently, their examination of men’s moral judgments is permeated by an initial distinction between the enlightened and the unenlightened moral consciousness. To draw such a distinction at the outset of inquiry is, as I shall later show,{5} to commit a methodological error. It is for this reason that (whatever its other advantages may be) I find it imprudent to adopt the metaphysical approach.

2. The psychological approach, considered merely as method, has something in common with the metaphysical approach: both seek to ground their interpretations of judgments of value and obligation in a more general theory than could be provided by an examination of these judgments themselves. In the one case the more general theory which is employed is an empirical psychology, in the other it is a metaphysics. However, the fundamental aims of the two approaches are different. The metaphysical approach is concerned to deduce a standard for conduct from the metaphysical truths which it accepts. The psychological approach does not focus its primary attention upon whether there is or is not such a standard, but seeks to understand moral phenomena in psychological terms. The questions which it raises relate to either or both of the following problems: (a) why men make the moral judgments which they do, and (b) what light is thrown on what is called “moral conduct” by a knowledge of the general nature of human motivation. Some theories which have used a psychological approach have placed more emphasis upon one of these questions than upon the other,{6} but it is characteristic of a psychological approach that it should assume that when these questions have been answered one need merely follow out the implications of the answers in order to have solved the basic problems of ethics. At the heart of these basic problems is the problem of whether there is a universally valid standard for conduct, and (if there is) what its nature may be.{7} Thus, the psychological approach, unlike the metaphysical approach, does not usually define the task of an ethical theory in terms of the discovery of a standard for conduct; it deals with this problem indirectly, through the conclusions it has drawn regarding the psychological basis of moral judgments and of moral conduct.

In weighing the advantages and the disadvantages of the psychological approach, it will be well first to examine the assumption that if one were to give both a psychological explanation of moral judgments and an account of the springs of what is denominated as “moral conduct,” one would be in a position to solve the main problems of ethics. After examining this question—which reduces to the question of the relevance of a psychological inquiry to a solution of questions which concern normative issues—we shall be in a better position to assess the promise which a psychological approach may hold.

The attack on the view that a psychological inquiry may solve the problems of ethics can come from either of two sources. There will be those who would admit that a knowledge of the nature of man is the basis on which these problems must be solved, but who would deny that empirical psychology can ever ascertain his true nature. Such an attack, which is characteristic of most who today incline toward the metaphysical approach, raises issues which can not possibly be treated within the scope of this study.{8} However, the second source of attack raises what has already appeared as the central methodological question posed by recent discussions of ethics: to what extent, if at all, can descriptive and explanatory studies solve problems in ethical theory? This second attack on the psychological approach would deny that either a psychological explanation of moral judgments or a psychological inquiry into motivation would entail any conclusions for ethics, since the latter is a normative, and not a descriptive or explanatory discipline.

I think it possible to show, within a very brief compass, that such a charge is not consistent with modes of argument frequently employed by those recent moralists who seek to uphold the dichotomy between normative and descriptive disciplines. In the first place, they have in fact often considered the question of the springs of “moral conduct” to be a question relevant to normative inquiry. If they had not done so they could not claim (as they almost universally do) that if the doctrine of psychological hedonism were true, the term “ought” would lose all meaning; nor could they claim (as some do) that if any form of psychological determinism were true, the same conclusion would follow. Those who have made such claims, or who find any force in them, can scarcely at the same time hold that an investigation of the springs of what is termed “moral conduct” entails no conclusions for the traditional normative problems of ethics. In the second place, it is equally clear that they have not actually divorced the question of why men make moral judgments from the question of whether there is or is not a universally valid standard for conduct. If the psychology of these judgments were really irrelevant to a consideration of this normati...

Índice

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• DEDICATION
• PREFACE
• CHAPTER 1-THE PROBLEM OF METHOD
• CHAPTER 2-DIRECT MORAL JUDGMENTS
• CHAPTER 3-REMOVED MORAL JUDGMENTS
• CHAPTER 4-JUDGMENTS OF MORAL WORTH
• CHAPTER 5-THE SOURCES OF MORAL CONTROVERSIES
• CHAPTER 6-THE RESOLUTION OF MORAL CONTROVERSIES
• ABSTRACT